Sound Quality goes Substantially downhill after upgrading to Creative's SB Live Drivers ??

[thatsright]

Stupid me, I decided to download the Most recent SB Live drivers off of the creative site. I installed the SB Live Uni-pack and then the Uni-Pack up date; with dates of 2-23-03. The file sizes are 6.17MB & 23.3MB

So once I installed the files on my XP Pro system, the sound immediately went down hill, substantially. It now sounds like my speakers are in another room or something. Before, the card gave out immersive, deep sounds. Now its just like a faint voice, and my Volume levels need to be increased to the max to get sub-par sound. Before, my sound was too loud at half of the Volume Level?? So what I did was uninstall the drivers, then remove my SB Live sound card from the Device manager. Once XP restarted, it detected the card and reinstalled the WDM Drivers that installed originally when I installed XP Pro.

BUT, the sound still sounds worse just like after I 'upgraded' to the Creative Drivers. I have no idea why, so perhaps someone knows how I can get the soundcard to sound like it did when I originally installed windows? Anyone know how I can revert to my originall SB Live (WDM) drivers that installed when I installed XP Pro?

Anyone have a idea. Thanks

 

[Lord Evermore]

Did you install the AudioHQ stuff as well? All that crap that you use to set up speaker layout and mixer and stuff.

Creative's technology plan:

1) Marketing.
2)
3)Profit!

 

[thatsright]

Originally posted by: Lord Evermore
Did you install the AudioHQ stuff as well? All that crap that you use to set up speaker layout and mixer and stuff.

Creative's technology plan:

1) Marketing.
2)
3)Profit!

Well, when I downloaded the newer drivers off of Creative's website then installed, yes I did install all options including the AudioHQ, etc. But then once I realized sound was soooo Crappy, I uninstalled all of the creative apps/drivers. BUT, the horrid sound quality still exists even after rolling back my drivers to the WDM drivers that were installed with XP originally.

Anyone have any ideas?

 

[JBT]

I bought a SB Live digital 5.1 awhile ago from new egg and if u really look on the website of creative the CD that comes with ur SB live card actaully has newer better drivers than are for download and it says not to use the ones on the site or u will be screwed.

 

[thatsright]

Well I have the original SB Live from 97 (or maybe it was 98?), and of course I have no idea where the original Instll CD that came with the card is?? BOTOH, even if I had it, i'm not too sure it would do me any good as the CD Drivers were way before XP even came out.

Anyone else have this problem, or can offer suggestions?

 

[Matt84]

The creative XP drivers for the Live are crap. Don't use them; just use the default windows XP drivers and you will be fine. The creative drivers worsen the quality and volume for line in recordings (i hook my vcr up 2 this for recording tv) and playback of any audio gets distorted sometimes too. By using the default Windows drivers all these problems seem to just go away.. very strange

As for driver removal, install the creative drivers again, then uninstall them fully. Then install the default XP creative drivers and all will be good again.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Careful. You're going to set off the Creative anti-competition alarms.

 

[digi187]

anyone have anything more on this? my dvds sound like crap now

 

[Acanthus]

you probably have it on a 2 speaker configuration, or environmental audio is on. Now after screwing all the drivers up that may no longer fix your problem though....

 

[digi187]

i still have it set in 5.1 speaker setup...

basically, it sounds like my center channel is nearly non existent :-(

Went through the control panel, made sure the volume wasnt down on the center channel wasnt down, made sure the sb wasnt doing the decoding...nothing helps....